England might not have performed, but Absolute Radio are claiming a big score with their marketing and content campaigns.
The station reunited Baddiel and Skinner for a series of exclusive podcasts and live shows, with the comedy pair in South Africa for the duration of the World Cup with chat, analysis, news and comedy.
Twenty podcasts were produced in all and there were regular updates into the Christian O’Connell Breakfast Show. The campaign was kicked off with a ‘South Africa Send Off Party’ at the London’s Lyric Theatre, with Baddiel & Skinner performing ‘Live and Unplanned’ for the first time in 14 years.
Keane, James and The Lightning Seeds also performed at the party in front of an sold out audience the event was the perfect mix of comedy, football and live music.
Online, over 2.3 million podcasts were downloaded throughout the campaign coming from 268,185 unique IP addresses (that’s unique devices to non-techies). The podcast reached number 1 in the podcast chart within the first week of launch with five of the top ten episodes in the iTunes podcast chart.
Absolute also included a series of four animated videos of the podcasts – the first time a commercial radio station has commissioned such a series – which generated 187,000 views/downloads on iTunes alone.
Content was enhanced by sponsor Sony Ericsson who provided a competition to send an Absolute listener out to South Africa to watch the tournament and give an everyday fan’s point of view. The winner provided daily blogs and recorded a video diary for the Absolute website and Sony Ericsson UK Facebook page.
Absolute hope the podcast content, combined with impressive stats at absoluteradio.co.uk, has helped establish te station as a football destination ahead of the 2010/2011 Barclays Premier League season, for which the broadcaster has commentary rights.